Archive for the ‘Islamic bigotry’ Category

Non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the “Arab” world [Racist Arabism and bigoted Islamism]eretzyisroel ^

Non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the “Arab” world

One key element missing from the discussion is the question of non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the “Arab” world. The Arab nationalists have succeeded in establishing some 23 non-democratic, ethnically (Arab) and religiously (Islam) defined nation-states in over 1 million square miles of territory, often at the expense of non-Arabs, such as the Kurds (Muslims, non-Arabs), Assyrians (Christians, non-Arabs), Copts (Christians, non-Arabs), southern Sudanese (Christian and pagan non-Arabs), Maronite Lebanese (Christian and mostly identified with their Phoenician ancestors) and Mizrahi Jews. Arab nationalist ideology claims all this territory exclusively as “Arab” despite the legitimate claims of non-Arabs and/or non-Muslims to ancient homelands long ago arabized with the spread of Islam, often through conquest.

I believe that the Arab opposition to the existence of non-Arab, non-Muslim Israel is based on the ideological motivations which led to the persecution of non-Arab minorities. The Assyrians suffered massacre and expulsion by the Arab nationalists of Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s. The Kurds have been persecuted and have suffered terribly for their struggle to establish an independent Kurdistan (at the hands of the Turks and Iranians as well, but that is another story.)

Arab nationalist ideology, and its Islamicist couterpart, cannot and will not tolerate non-Arab and non-Islamic peoples organizing themselves into their own independent nation states. Indeed, I have seen on Islamicist web sites the goal of “regaining” Spain in the name of Islam.

I believe that we need to place Israel’s struggle to survive into this context. Any non-Arab/non-Islamic state in the region must rely on strength (political, moral, spiritual and military) if it wants to survive in the Middle East. In this context can we thus place Israel’s demand for security. It is not security for the sake of security, not seucirty for the sake of oppressing another people, but security for the sake of survival against two racist and exclusivist ideologies (Arabism and Islamicism) which have succeeded in repressing the just struggles for national self-determination of most non-Arab peoples in the Middle East.

Again, religious persecution in Iran
February 20, 2009
Ethel C. Fenig
As Thomas Lifson noted yesterday Iranian authorities destroyed a Sufi holy site, continuing their practice of pressuring and discriminating against religions that do not strictly follow the Shi’ite form of Islam. But the Sufis are not the only religious minority suffering discrimination in Iran.

The 2500 year old Jewish community, which numbered over 80,000 thirty years ago at the time of the Khoemeni Revolution which overthrew the Shah, has dwindled to about 20,000. Those remaining Jews live restricted personal and religious lives, always under suspicion of being traitors for pro “Zionist” activities.
Despite the official distinction between “Jews,” “Zionists,” and “Israel,” the most common accusation the Jews encounter is that of maintaining contacts with Zionists. The Jewish community does enjoy a measure of religious freedom but is faced with constant suspicion of cooperating with the Zionist state and with “imperialistic America” — both such activities are punishable by death. Jews who apply for a passport to travel abroad must do so in a special bureau and are immediately put under surveillance. The government does not generally allow all members of a family to travel abroad at the same time to prevent Jewish emigration. Again, the Jews live under the status of dhimmi, with the restrictions im posed on religious minorities. Jewish leaders fear government reprisals if they draw attention to official mistreatment of their community.

Iran’s official government-controlled media often issues anti-Semitic propaganda. A prime example is the government’s publishing of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious Czarist forgery, in 1994 and 1999.2 Jews also suffer varying degrees of officially sanctioned discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education, and public accommodations.

The Islamization of the country has brought about strict control over Jewish educational institutions. Before the revolution, there were some 20 Jewish schools functioning throughout the country. In recent years, most of these have been closed down. In the remaining schools, Jewish principals have been replaced by Muslims. In Teheran there are still three schools in which Jewish pupils constitute a majority. The curriculum is Islamic, and Persian is forbidden as the language of instruction for Jewish studies. Special Hebrew lessons are conducted on Fridays by the Orthodox Otzar ha-Torah organization, which is responsible for Jewish religious education. Saturday is no longer officially recognized as the Jewish sabbath, and Jewish pupils are compelled to attend school on that day. There are three synagogues in Teheran, but since 1994, there has been no rabbi in Iran, and the bet din does not function.

At least 13 Jews have been executed in Iran since the Islamic revolution 30 years ago, most of them for either religious reasons or their connection to Israel. For example, in May 1998, Jewish businessman Ruhollah Kakhodah-Zadeh was hanged in prison without a public charge or legal proceeding, apparently for assisting Jews to emigrate.

Other religious groups are persecuted too. This week Iran admitted that seven Bahai leaders arrested and detained more than eight months ago would be charged with spying for Israel.

The Bahai faith, which began in the 19th century in what is now Iran, claims their founder, Baha’a’llah, is the last Moslem prophet, not Mohammed. Bahai’s international headquarters are located in Haifa, Israel where Bahais, along with Moslems and Christians of various backgrounds, plus other religions in addition to Jews can practice freely.

This is not true in Iran.

Bahais claim 300,000 followers in Iran, but there are no independent statistics on the denomination’s size in the country. The Islamic republic allows Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who are regarded as members of monotheistic religions, to hold religious gatherings. Bahais are forbidden to hold such meetings, and those who make their faith public are banned from studying at universities serving in the army and working in government offices.

The Iranian prosecutors claim

“All evidence points to the fact that the Bahai organization is in direct contact with the foreign enemies of Iran,” Dorri-Najafabadi wrote in the letter, (snip) “The ghastly Bahai organization is illegal on all levels, their dependence on Israel has been documented, their antagonism with Islam and the Islamic System is obvious, their danger for national security is proven and any replacement organization must also be dealt with according to the law,”

Q&A: Iran’s Waning Human Rights – New York Times, Iran is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which affords legal rights to minorities and minors. Persecution of religious minorities …

Persecution, Tension and Awakening in Northern Iran – The Henry …Many Azeris view themselves as something of a sleeping giant in Iranian politics … and Azeris, but of Arabs, Kurds, Balochs, Turkmen and other minorities, …http://www.henryjacksonsociety.org/stories.asp?id=343

Iran Working Group examines the situation of ethnic and religious minorities
2008-03-17
LEADERSHIP COUNCIL FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, March 13 representatives of Iran’s ethnic and religious groups testified at a meeting of the Iran Working Group, a Congressional body co-chaired by Congressman Mark Kirk and Congressman Robert Andrews. The Leadership Council for Human Rights assisted in organizing the hearing, which included testimony from Fakhteh Zamani, Director of the Association for the Defense of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners; Sharif Behruz, U.S. Representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan; Kit Bigelow, Director of External Affairs for the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the U.S.; Dr. Ali Al-Taie, Professor at Shaw University and author of The Arabs of Khuzestan and Iran; Dr. M. Hosseinbor, Iranian Baluchi and author of Iran and Its Nationalities: The Case of Baloch Nationalism; and Nina Shea, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

LCHR President Kathryn Cameron Porter served as moderator. Porter stressed the importance of seeking solidarity among Iran’s diverse marginalized groups in order to promote human rights for all persecuted peoples.

Rep. Kirk, who convened the working group meeting, said the treatment of Iran’s minorities was a bi-partisan issue of concern. He spoke about the importance of Iran in the future of the United States’ foreign policy, and warned about the danger of failing to understand the country’s complexities and making cultural mistakes.

Nina Shea gave a comprehensive summary of the International Religious Freedom Report on Iran, describing “systematic, ongoing persecution based primarily or entirely upon religion.” Iran’s constitution recognizes Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, as well as non-Shi’a Muslims, as members of official minority religions, but there are severe limitations upon the rights of these groups. According to the International Religious Freedom Report, religious minorities “face substantial societal discrimination, and government actions continued to support elements of society who create a threatening atmosphere.”

Groups that are not recognized face even greater problems, as illustrated by the testimony of Kit Bigelow. More than 200 Baha’is have been killed in Iran since 1978 and countless more have been imprisoned, attacked and harassed, she said. The elimination of the Baha’is is explicit government policy, meaning that they face arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and defamation from the government sponsored media on a daily basis.

Since Ahmadinejad came to power there has been a new wave of discrimination against Baha’is, Bigelow said. A new draft penal code is currently being considered which specifically requires the death penalty as a punishment for apostasy, and it is thought that this is a direct threat against the Baha’i community which is regularly condemned for apostasy by the authorities.

Discrimination goes beyond religion. Iran is home to many distinct ethnic groups with their own identities and languages. Persians, the dominant ethnic group in Iran, in fact constitute just 45 percent of the population, said Dr. Hosseinbor. The remaining 55 percent of the population, made up of Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Azeris, Turkmen and Turks, tend to be spread around the outside of the state, often splitting their population between two or three countries.

Sharif Behruz said that the poorest areas of Iran are those populated by ethnic minorities. Lack of investment has resulted in a comparatively low quality of life.

One of the biggest grievances of Iran’s ethnic minorities, expressed by all the representatives of minority groups present at the meeting, is the restriction on cultural rights, particularly the use of minority languages. Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis and other minorities are not permitted to use their mother tongue in schools, and there are significant barriers to the publishing of books. This is just one part of a larger policy of “forced assimilation” which, according to Fakhteh Zamani, has been put in place by the rulers of Iran since the 1920s.

The state-sponsored media also runs defamation campaigns, she said, including openly insulting Azeris, depicting them as intellectually challenged characters, and generally perpetuating the misconception that they are “backward”- a stereotype held by many due to the fact that they are not fluent in Farsi, the official national language.

Under the Islamic Republic, said Sharif Behruz, people are systematically repressed, and minorities are viewed as second class citizens: “unlawful detentions, torture, harassment, executions and disappearances have become a daily routine in the Kurdish areas,” he said.

Behruz said that in order to move forward and develop Iran must become “democratic and decentralized.” This would “recover its devastated economy, create political stability inside and assist in bringing about stability, security in the region, and most importantly, as an effective member of the international community can strengthen world peace.”

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee emphasized the importance of continuing to speak up for these minority groups. “Every government can be judged by its treatment of ethnic and religious minorities,” she said, “and Iran would get a failing grade.”http://www.pdki.org/articles1-1337-83.htm

Many Azeris see Iranian hand behind wave of unrest
Iran is working hard to become the leader of the global jihad. By Ilan Greenberg in the International Herald Tribune, with thanks to Twostellas:

BAKU, Azerbaijan: An article denigrating Islam published early last month in an obscure newspaper here in the capital has led to emotional demonstrations across Azerbaijan and in Iran. A prominent Iranian cleric demanded the death of the two writers of the article, who have been imprisoned in Azerbaijan.
The article blamed Islam for Azerbaijan’s meager development and likened the Prophet Muhammad to a used handkerchief. The ensuing furor echoes the case of the Danish cartoons published in September 2005 that mocked Islam and that, months later, generated protests throughout the Muslim world.

Here, the thunderous rhetoric from village imams and other religious conservatives has sent tremors through the Azeri government and the secular elite of the nation.

“I am for freedom of speech but not the freedom to insult,” said Haji Ilgar, an imam at the Jama Old City Mosque in Baku who is often critical of the government of the secular president, Ilham Aliyev. “The only solution is to take this to the courts.”

Many Azeris see the roots of the trouble in what they consider Iran’s shadowy influence here. The two countries have had an often prickly relationship since Azerbaijan’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Iran is the regional power, and Azerbaijan is an up- and-coming oil state, tucked between Iran and Russia on the Caspian Sea.

Both Iran and Azerbaijan are Shiite, but Azeris fear that Iran wants to destabilize the country by spreading its brand of militant Islam across the border. Iran is struggling to deal with a large minority — upwards of a third — of Iran’s 66 million people who are ethnic Azeri, a beleaguered minority that frequently agitates for more rights and cultural autonomy. Iran does not want them to get any ideas from a secular and prospering Azerbaijan, in this view.http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/014536.php

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AHWAZI – ARABS

The British Ahwazi Friendship Society campaigns on behalf of the Ahwazi Arabs, an indigenous ethnic group persecuted by successive Iranian governments. …http://www.ahwaz.org.uk/

Middle East transfer: The continuing Iranian persecution of its Ahwazi Arab population … Over a million Arabs have been deported from the district of Al-Ahwaz, home to some eight million Arabs, in Southern-East Iran, near the Iraqi border. …http://www.henryjacksonsociety.org/stories.asp?id=366

San Francisco Chronicle – Little-known Arab group in Iran faces …Little-known Arab group in Iran faces persecution … The government accuses Ahwazi Arabs of plotting foreign invasions with everyone from the CIA to Saddam …http://web.radicalparty.org/pressreview/print_right.php

Ahwazi: WS on the Case of Ahwazi Arabs in Iran, These persons, all members of Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority were … According to reports, demonstrators were demanding an end to the persecution of Arabs, … http://www.unpo.org/article.php?id=3985

Look Who’s Persecuting Their Arab Minority! Persecution of an Arab minority. Confiscation of Arab land. Ethnic cleansing. It’s just another day in…Iran. … Tehran has a grand plan to make the Ahwazi a minority in their own land through … As I have written from time to time, Islam is very unpopular in Iran … http://daledamos.blogspot.com/search/label/Iran

Clergy gather to protest Iran’s persecution of the Bahai Faith
Organizers say if a government can persecute one religion, all faiths are at risk
April 09, 2009
By john darling
for the Mail Tribune
Leaders of several faiths are gathering Saturday in Medford to protest the persecution of members of the Bahai Faith under the Iranian government and to show support for a resolution by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., calling for the release of prisoners being held in Iraq for their faith.http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090409/NEWS/904090321/-1/LIFE

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KURDS

The Plight of Iran’s Kurds | The Middle East InstituteIndeed, to understand the plight of Kurds in Iran, Amitay contended, … coupled with what Amitay characterizes as the persecution of Kurds in Turkey, …http://www.mideasti.org/summary/plight-irans-kurds

Forgotten people: the world and the Kurds. (persecution of Kurds …(persecution of Kurds in Iran and Iraq after the cease-fire) … find The Nation articles. We’re living through hard times,” a Kurdish father tells his son …http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-7849315.html

Testimony of Sharif Behruz, Democratic Party of Iranian …Mar 13, 2008 … The Kurdish area of Iranian Kurdistan is 125000 sq km which is about 8 … most of the Kurds in Iran suffer from triple layers of oppression …http://www.pdki.org/articles1-1346-28.htm

Autonomy of Iranian KurdistanNov 8, 1983 … of democracy in Iran and autonomy in Kurdistan, and in order to overcome the double oppression of the oppressed Kurdish nationality. …http://www.iran-e-azad.org/english/kurd.html

Plan for Autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan… The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) is the parliament-in-exile of … and in order to overcome the double oppression of the oppressed Kurdish nationality. … 1- The autonomous region encompasses all of Iranian Kurdistan. …http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/32/

October 25, 2007 (RFE/RL) — The Baluchi minority in southwestern Pakistan and southeastern Iran is increasingly marginalized, discriminated against by the state, and suffers from limited access to the benefits of citizenship, according to political observers and human rights groups.

Although the 6 million-8 million ethnic Baluchis in both countries live in a strategic location atop untapped hydrocarbon and mineral deposits and possible trade routes, it looks unlikely that their grim conditions will improve soon.

A report released on October 22 by the International Crisis Group argues that only free and fair elections are likely to encourage Baluchi participation in Pakistani politics. The Brussels-based think tank predicts that in the absence of political reconciliation, violence will continue unabated between Pakistan’s military and Baluchi nationalist militants demanding political and economic autonomy.

“The Baluch people think their resources are being monopolized by the government, that their land and their resources are not their own, and that there is no freedom to express their opinions.” — I.A. Rehman, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

Baluchi leaders claim to be fighting for autonomy and control over their people’s abundant natural resources, but Islamabad regards them as revolutionaries bankrolled by regional archrival India. Years of armed insurrection have killed hundreds of Baluchi militants, Pakistani troops, and civilians.

I.A. Rehman, the director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent group that monitors human rights abuses, says the fighting has displaced thousands of Baluchis in the insurgency-plagued districts of Dera Bugti and Kohlu. Rehman told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan that the government’s strong-arm tactics to suppress the insurgency have created a troubling human rights situation.

“There is the question of the suppression of all dissent. The cases of the disappeared people are only the tip of the problem,” Rehman said. “The real issue in Baluchistan is that the Baluch people think their resources are being monopolized by the government, that their land and their resources are not their own, and that there is no freedom to express their opinions.”

Displaced Or Missing

The International Crisis Group calls the Baluchi plight a “forgotten conflict.” It maintains that the fighting has so far displaced 84,000 people, while thousands of Baluchi nationalist activists languish in jails and hundreds remain missing.

The Pakistani government meanwhile claims to be pouring billions of dollars into major infrastructure-development projects, including a new port on the Arabian sea coast at Gwadar, along with the construction of major roads, rail networks, dams, and new cantonments. Other ambitious projects are aimed at extracting gold, copper, oil, gas, and minerals in Baluchistan Province, which accounts for nearly half of Pakistan’s territory and is home to some 8 million people, about half of them ethnic Pashtuns.

But many Baluchis oppose such projects and regard them as unfair efforts to exploit their land. Mariana Baabar, an Islamabad-based journalist and political commentator, says the Baluchis are among the most impoverished groups in the country, and require assistance to meet basic needs as well as longer-term development efforts.

“They do not have clean drinking water. They are not being provided with [basic] health care or education. And they are even regarded as not being part of Pakistan,” Baabar said. The Pakistani government “is trying to build a port in Gawadar, but, again, non-Baluchis from Punjab and other regions are being taken there [to settle]. So that is why the people of Baluchistan are unhappy.”

Poverty, Discrimination

Across the border in neighboring Iran, Baluchis are enduring similar woes. There some 2 million Baluchis concentrated in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province, representing about 2 percent of the country’s total population.

Drewery Dyke, a Middle East researcher for human rights watchdog Amnesty International in London, told Radio Free Afghanistan that Iran’s Baluchi population is subject to economic and cultural discrimination. Sistan-Baluchistan is “certainly one of the poorest and most deprived provinces in the country. And it has suffered droughts and extreme weather conditions. And certainly — with respect to the situation of women and schooling for girls — there are shortcomings that the state really needs to address,” Dyke said.

In a September report that Dyke helped research, Amnesty International documented rights abuses by Iranian authorities and the armed Baluchi and hard-line Sunni group Jondallah (which has reportedly been renamed the Iranian Peoples’ Resistance Movement). Since 2005, Jondallah appears to have carried out lethal attacks on Iranian security forces, and taken and executed hostages. Iranian authorities have blamed Jondollah for other attacks that resulted in civilian casualties, but the group has denied responsibility.

Amnesty International has criticized the arrest of suspected Baluchi militants who might have been subjected to torture to produce forced confessions. The group has expressed concern over special judicial procedures put in place by Iranian authorities, and a steep rise in the number of Baluchis who have been targeted.

Dyke said the Iranian authorities “have established a special court…almost like a security court to deal with what is obviously a very severe situation — in some respects, an insurgency in the country. It appears to [have led] to a decline, an erosion of the safeguards, [of] the fair-trial standards and a massive rise in the implementation of the death penalty against the Baluchis.”

The plights of their respective Baluchi minorities are unlikely to improve in the short term. In the best-case scenario, human rights advocates in Pakistan maintain that the coming national elections in Pakistan — if they are sufficiently transparent — might boost Baluchi participation in mainstream politics. That, they say, could provide incentives that help defuse militancy…http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1079022.html

Nov 25 , 2008

Appeal

Stop the execution of 5 Baloch innocent young men

Reza Hossein Borr

London- 25.11.08– After the demolition of Azim Abad mosque in Balochistan on 27 August 2008, several students and teachers were arrested for expressing their discontent about the demolition of the mosque. Five of them are now on trial on fabricated charges of having links with the People’s Resistance Movement of Iran, Jondollah. Everybody in Baluchistan knows quite well that these are simple teachers and students that have no any kind of links with any armed group or political organizations.

The Islamic Republic of Iran claimed that their trial has been open to the public and the parents of the victims were also present. That regime portrays this trial as if the innocent teachers and students were guilty of some criminal activities in which innocent people have died. This is a new farce of a new kind. The government destroyed the mosque and arrested several teachers and students. They are the victims. There is no any other victim. What a regime! What an Islamic Republic? What an Islamic Republic of Iran? What an Islam in which all sins are allowed! The regime demolishes a mosque, arrests many people for protesting against it and then they stage manage a dramatic trial and claim that there were some people who were victimized by those teachers and students that were arrested.http://www.thebaluch.com/112508_pressRelease_b.php

Karim Abdian, Ph.D., executive director of the Ahwaz Human Rights Organization, USA , who represents the Ahwazi Arabs in Iran , deplored the continued violation of human rights of the smaller nationalities in Iran and mentioned the hanging of Baluch journalist and human rights campaigner Yaqub Mehrnihad.http://www.thebaluch.com/081608_release.php

American Chronicle | Appeal to Save the Lives of 2 Baloch Teachers …For these reasons, the Baluchs are widely persecuted and undeservedly vilified in Iran. A few days ago, two Baluch religious leaders and teachers, …http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/57991

1) Since Muslim nations (OIC & Iran) push to criminalize criticism of Islamists’ bigotry, doesn’t it mean that anything being said in that conference is the opposite of tolerance and of truth?

2) How can the UN avoid the largest practitioner of racism, which is Arabism (against: Kurds, Berbers, Africans, Jews, Assyrians, Asians, etc.), but focuses on the so called “anti-Arab racism”?
[ Arabism is racism! ]

5) Why is the essence of the entire “conflict'” in the M.E. not a form of bigotry by Arab Muslims who can’t “accept” the non Arab non Muslim pluralistic democratic Israel?

6) Are Jews living, or even allowed to live in racist “Palestinian” controlled territories (Judenrein – ethnic cleaning)?

7) When will lefty radicals (Meretz/B’Tzelem) talk about preferential treatments to Arabs OVER Jews inside Israel, like in Hebron and in other cases?

8] Why are (Arab Palestinian or Hezbollah) the ones using its own kids as cannon fodders considered “innocent victims”?

9) Is Israel battling just terrorism or an ARAB MUSLIM CAMPAIGN OF GENOCIDE since the 1920’s?

10) How more racist can the Durban-conference get, If the two oppressive regimes: Libya & Iran are the “stars”?Libya – whose Muamar Qaddafi (besides his own persecution of non-Arabs, especially blacks in his country) the one of the champions in today’s racist Arabization, and Arabist racism against Africa (whose “vision” has been compared to Hitler’s “lebensraum”), in: Chad, Nigeria, etc., ultimately his crimes in the Sudan region helped in leading the current Al-Bashir’s genocide on Millions of Africans (financed mainly by Libya and S. Arabia).Iran, the regime of Islamic bigotry’s oppression on its own population with an added special persecution on all on-Muslims: Christians, Baha’i, Jews, etc. or on non-“pure-Persians” like: Ahwazi – Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, etc. now under the leadership of: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [EichmannJihad – the Islamic Hitler] who plays as if he “denies” the holocaust only in order to prepare for (his wishful) the second, “wiping off Israel”.

Thus, the shame of the UN, kidnapped by the epitome of intolerance today, the infamous twin fascism: Arab racism, as in Gadhafi, and Islamic bigotry as in Amadinejad, are going to be “preaching” (and determine) to the world on tolerance.

Some 125 parliamentarians gathered together last week for the historic founding conference of the Interparliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA), brought together by a new sophisticated, globalizing, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism reminiscent of the atmospherics of the 1930s, and without parallel or precedent since the end of World War II.

The new anti-Jewishness overlaps with classical anti-Semitism but is distinguishable from it. It found early juridical, and even institutional, expression in the UN’s “Zionism is racism” resolution – which the late US senator Daniel Moynihan said “gave the abomination of anti-Semitism the appearance of international legal sanction” – but has gone dramatically beyond it. This new anti-Semitism almost needs a new vocabulary to define it; however, it can best be identified using a rights-based juridical perspective.

In a word, classical or traditional anti-Semitism is the discrimination against, denial of or assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members of whatever host society they inhabit. The new anti-Semitism involves the discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations – the denial of and assault upon the Jewish people’s right even to live – with Israel as the “collective Jew among the nations.”

As the closing “London Declaration” of the ICCA conference affirmed: “We are alarmed at the resurrection of the old language of prejudice and its modern manifestations – in rhetoric and political action – against Jews, Jewish belief and practice and the State of Israel.”

Observing the complex intersections between the old and the new anti-Semitism, and the impact of the new on the old, Per Ahlmark, former leader of the Swedish Liberal Party and deputy prime minister of Sweden, pithily concluded: “Compared to most previous anti-Jewish outbreaks, this [new anti-Semitism] is often less directed against individual Jews. It attacks primarily the collective Jews, the State of Israel. And then such attacks start a chain reaction of assaults on individual Jews and Jewish institutions… In the past, the most dangerous anti-Semites were those who wanted to make the world Judenrein, ‘free of Jews.’ Today, the most dangerous anti-Semites might be those who want to make the world Judenstaatrein, ‘free of a Jewish state.’”

Genocidal Anti-Semitism

The first modality of the new anti-Semitism – and the most lethal type – is what I would call genocidal anti-Semitism. This is not a term that I use lightly or easily. In particular, I am referring to the Genocide Convention’s prohibition against the “direct and public incitement to genocide.” If anti-Semitism is the most enduring of hatreds and genocide is the most horrific of crimes, then the convergence of this genocidal intent embedded in anti-Semitic ideology is the most toxic of combinations.

There are three manifestations of this genocidal anti-Semitism. The first is the state-sanctioned – indeed state-orchestrated – genocidal anti-Semitism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, dramatized by the parading in the streets of Teheran of a Shihab-3 missile draped in the emblem “wipe Israel off the Map,” while demonizing both the State of Israel as a “cancerous tumor to be excised” and the Jewish people as “evil incarnate.”

A second manifestation of this genocidal anti-Semitism is in the covenants and charters, platforms and policies of such terrorist movements and militias as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah and al-Qaida, which not only call for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they may be, but also for the perpetration of acts of terror in furtherance of that objective.

The third manifestation of this genocidal anti-Semitism is the religious fatwas or execution writs, where these genocidal calls in mosques and media are held out as religious obligations – where Jews and Judaism are characterized as the perfidious enemy of Islam, and Israel becomes the Salmon Rushdie of the nations.

In a word, Israel is the only state in the world – and the Jews the only people in the world – that are the object of a standing set of threats by governmental, religious and terrorist bodies seeking their destruction. The London Declaration – again in a significant clarion call – recognized that “where there is incitement to genocide signatories [to the Genocide Convention] automatically have an obligation to act.” This promise must now be acted upon.

Ideological Anti-Semitism

Ideological anti-Semitism is a much more sophisticated and arguably a more pernicious expression of the new anti-Semitism. It finds expression not in any genocidal incitement against Jews and Israel, or overt racist denial of the Jewish people and Israel’s right to be; rather, ideological anti-Semitism disguises itself as part of the struggle against racism.

The first manifestation of this ideological anti-Semitism was its institutional and juridical anchorage in the “Zionism is racism” resolution at the UN. Notwithstanding the fact that the there was a formal repeal of this resolution, Zionism as racism remains alive and well in the global arena, particularly in the campus cultures of North America and Europe, as confirmed by the recent British All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism.

The second manifestation is the indictment of Israel as an apartheid state. This involves more than the simple indictment; it also involves the call for the dismantling of Israel as an apartheid state as evidenced by the events at the 2001 UN World Conference against Racism in Durban.

The third manifestation of ideological anti-Semitism involves the characterization of Israel not only as an apartheid state – and one that must be dismantled as part of the struggle against racism – but as a Nazi one.

And so it is then that Israel is delegitimized, if not demonized, by the ascription to it of the two most scurrilous indictments of 20th-century racism – Nazism and apartheid – the embodiment of all evil. These very labels of Zionism and Israel as “racist, apartheid and Nazi” supply the criminal indictment. No further debate is required. The conviction that this triple racism warrants the dismantling of Israel as a moral obligation has been secured. For who would deny that a “racist, apartheid, Nazi” state should not have any right to exist today? What is more, this characterization allows for terrorist “resistance” to be deemed justifiable – after all, such a situation is portrayed as nothing other than occupation et résistance, where resistance against a racist, apartheid, Nazi occupying state is legitimate, if not mandatory.

Legalized Anti-Semitism

If ideological anti-Semitism seeks to mask itself under the banner of anti-racism, legalized anti-Semitism is even more sophisticated and insidious. Here, anti-Semitism simultaneously seeks to mask itself under the banner of human rights, to invoke the authority of international law and to operate under the protective cover of the UN. In a word – and in an inversion of human rights, language and law – the singling out of Israel and the Jewish people for differential and discriminatory treatment in the international arena is “legalized.”

But one example of legalized anti-Semitism occurred annually for more than 35 years at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. This influential body consistently began its annual session with Israel being the only country singled out for country-specific indictment – even before the deliberations started – the whole in breach of the UN’s own procedures and principles. In this Alice in Wonderland situation, the conviction and sentence were pronounced even before the hearings commenced. Some 30 percent of all the resolutions passed at the commission were indictments of Israel.

After the commission was replaced in June 2006 by the UN Human Rights Council, the new body proceeded to condemn one member state – Israel – in 80% of its 25 country-specific resolutions, while the major human rights violators of our time enjoyed exculpatory immunity. Indeed, five special sessions, two fact-finding missions and a high level commission of inquiry have been devoted to a single purpose: the singling out of Israel.

This week’s ICCA conference and London Declaration unequivocally condemned this “legalized” anti-Semitism, calling out that “governments and the UN should resolve that never again will the institutions of the international community and the dialogue of nations states be abused to try to establish any legitimacy for anti-Semitism, including the singling out of Israel for discriminatory treatment in the international arena, and we will never witness – or be party to – another gathering like Durban in 2001.”

The Resurgence of Global Anti-Semitism: Evidentiary Data

The data unsurprisingly confirm that anti-Semitic incidents are very much on the rise. Still, the available figures only show half the picture – they demonstrate an increase in this old/new anti-Semitism by concentrating on the traditional anti-Semitic paradigm targeting individual Jews and Jewish institutions, while failing to consider the new anti-Semitic paradigm targeting Israel as the Jew among nations and the fallout from it for traditional anti-Semitism. But the rise in traditional anti-Semitism is bound up with the rise in the new anti-Semitism, insidiously buoyed by a climate receptive to attacks on Jews because of the attacks on the Jewish state. Indeed, reports illustrate both an upsurge in violence and related anti-Semitic crimes corresponding with the 2006 Second Lebanon War and the recent Israel-Hamas war, which delegates to the ICCA conference characterized as a “pandemic.”

Conclusion

It is this global escalation and intensification of anti-Semitism that underpins – indeed, necessitates – the establishment of the ICCA to confront and combat this oldest and most enduring of hatreds. Silence is not an option. The time has come not only to sound the alarm – but to act. For as history has taught us only too well: While it may begin with Jews, it does not end with Jews. Anti-Semitism is the canary in the mine shaft of evil, and it threatens us all.

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(IsraelNN.com) The Obama administration announced Friday that it is boycotting the Durban II conference on racism unless there are significant changes to what the State Department called “unsalvageable” anti-Israeli resolutions.

The decision by the State Department pleased Kadima leader and acting Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Knesset Member Silvan Shalom, Livni’s predecessor, who said it is “a sign for the entire world.” Livni stated that the policy move “must lead the way for more countries that share the same values” to boycott the convention, scheduled for April. Canada already has said it will not participate.

Israel has been concerned by the new American government’s change in policy to participate in preliminary committee meetings for the convention, which is to be held in Geneva but bears the name of the South African city where the first meeting was held in 2001. The United States walked out of it because of harsh anti-Israeli resolutions.

The proposed motions for the April meeting single out Israel for its presence in Judea and Samaria and include a Palestinian Authority proposal for “international protection of the Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory” effectively claiming that Arabs are victims of alleged Israeli racism and that the U.N. should protect them.

The Durban planning committee, chaired by Libya, also rejected a European Union (EU) condemnation of Holocaust denial.

The State Department announcement came after growing domestic protests of the Obama administration’s participation in the planning committee. It would reconsider its boycott if the conference drops its reference to any specific country, which so far names Israel but no other nation, and if it does not affirm the 2001 Durban resolutions that singled out Israel.

“Unfortunately, the document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse,” State Department spokesman Robert Wood said. “As a result, the United States will not participate in the forthcoming negotiations on this text, nor will we be able to participate in a conference that is based on this text.”

European states consider boycotting Durban 2 summit
The 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban was meant to lay down a blueprint for nations…http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1067540.html

DiCaprio To Convert to Judaism To Marry Bar: Arab World Says To Hell With Him

Israeli journalist, Guy Bechor, writes on the Israeli website gplanet (Hebrew language) that the Arab world is going crazy over reports that Leonardo DiCaprio is converting to Judaism in order to marry Sports Illustrated cover girl, Bar Rafieli, an Israeli.

The report appeared on Al-Arabiya website and, according to Bechor, is quite vicious. Apparently, Leo is a hero in the Arab world (everyone loved Titanic) but that the combination of his relationship with the Jewish beauty, and his conversion, should it happen) instantly transforms him to dirt in their eyes.

I thought the Arab world had changed? I thought that their objection is only to the occupation not to Israel itself, let alone the Jews.

But now Leo is being attacked the same way Elizabeth Taylor was when she became a Jew 45 years ago and was boycotted by the Arab world. I think she still is.

Anyway, if you know Arabic, read the 144 nasty contacts about Leo (and Bar) in Al Arabiya. It appears that they may hate us. They really do!

… the construction worker was an Israeli-Arab who worked for an Israeli
Arab. “He took the bulldozer, with which he fed his own wife and family, and
used it to crush other families to death, simply for being Israeli Jews.”http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=68770

[Arab racism against Jews even inside Israel] Fear of calling a terrorist a
terrorist Ha’aretz, Israel – Jul 7, 2008 If justifying the murder of innocents
because they belong to a certain hated group is not abject racism, I’d like to
know what is. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999795.html

Police shut down offices of Islamic Movement branch suspected of aiding Hamas
Ha’aretz, Israel [August 24, 2008]
He was later in court with incitement to violence and racism, over a fiery speech he gave in the Wadi Joz neighborhood, in which he accused Jews of using children’s blood to bake bread.

UN’s Durban II Conference Against Racism? The Durban World Conference against Racism… in 2001, was driven by noble and just ideals… To the dismay of the many who shared the spirit of the conference’s goal, the debate degenerated into a festival of overt bigotry. According to the Canadian government, it spiraled into “a circus of intolerance.” And now, in anticipation of Durban II planned for 2009 in Geneva, human rights advocates and government officials alike predict it will be just more of the same. Some Background The first Durban conference’s condemnation of Western European colonialism became tainted when it omitted mention of far more recent colonial crimes, including that of Armenia, and China’s ongoing repression of Tibet. Arab and Islamic states attempted to impose an agenda declaring Palestinian victimhood at the hands of Israeli “colonialism and oppression.” Further, they attempted to equate modern Zionism, the belief in Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland, with racism. The Sudanese Minister of Justice displayed perhaps the most overt example of the hypocrisy of the conference; representing a country guilty of ongoing slavery and genocide, the minister demanded reparations for historical slavery. French philosopher and writer Pascal Bruckner put it best when he said, “It was like a cannibal suddenly calling for vegetarianism.” At the NGO forum, hatred for Jews (and by extension for the U.S.) was not veiled behind politics. Anti-Semitic cartoons were circulated. Copies of Mein Kampf and the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were handed out. A mob screaming, “You are killers,” shut down the only session on anti-Semitism, one of the most ancient and virulent forms of intolerance. A number of delegates were physically threatened, amidst calls of “Death to the Jews.” Australia and Canada issued statements condemning the conference’s hypocrisy. The Israeli and U.S. delegations walked out…

Arab Racism & Islamic Bigotry [that can’t tolerate the existance of the non-Arab non-Muslim entity – Israel, though no one doubdts the fact that it’s rather a multi-racial and multi-culture society with Arabs making up 20% to 25% of it’s population with equal rights and freedom, important members of its parliament and in other high offices, whereas in racist Arab “Palestine” no Jew is even allowed to reside – ethnic cleansing] reaches a hight in [controlling the UN through its mighty oil, economics, bocycottings threats and terrorizing power] mobilizing the UN to “denounce” Israel, Zionism.

CULTURE OF HATE–JIHAD RACISM ACROSS THE WORLD – The Durban World Conference Against Racism — where the culture of hate was … This Arabization and Islamization of the Bible thus robs not only the Jews … http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/cultuHre.htm

UN World Conference Against Racism But the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist campaign is not uninformed bigotry, it is conscious politics. …Further, this fact of world politics creates altogether … http://www.adl.org/durban/adl_quotes.asp

Arab Racism One of the accusations which the various Arab countries (including Egypt and Jordan which have peace treaties with Israel) often make against Israel is that “Zionism is racism”. Defining Zionism, the national liberation movement of jews, the victims of racism, as racism is particularly cynical, yet it seems that the Arabs have succeeded to convince the leaders of some nations, themselves victims of racism, to support this vicious accusation. The latest attempt to define Zionism as racism was at the 2001 UNESCO conference which was held in Durban, South Africa. The resolution which was initiated by Arab countries enjoyed the support of most participants. Especially painful was the support of such African leaders as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Some Western countries, however, notably Australia and Canada, objected and accused the conference of hypocrisy.

The Canadian delegation, for example, issued the following statement: “Canada is still here today only because we wanted to have our voice decry the attempts at this Conference to de-legitimize the State of Israel and to dishonor the history and suffering of the Jewish people. We believe, and we have said in the clearest possible terms, that it was inappropriate – wrong – to address the Palestinian-Israel conflict in this forum. We have said, and will continue to say, that anything – any process, any declaration, any language – presented in any forum that does not serve to advance a negotiated peace that will bring security, dignity and respect to the people of the region is – and will be – unacceptable to Canada.”It was for that reason that both Israel and the United States under the leadership of Secretary Colin Powell, himself no stranger to racism, pulled their delegations from the conference. The final text adopted by the conference drops all direct criticism of Israel, but does recognize the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and expresses concern at their plight under foreigh occupation.That was only the latest attempt to define Zionism as racism. In November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” In December 1991, the General Assembly rescinded this resolution through Resolution 4686.All those years the Arab countries continued to promote this false notion. It is therefore of interest to check how different things are on the other side of the fence, namely in the Arab countries.

Even though there are many blacks who live in those countries the question whether they are subject to racism was academic for a long time and one had to resort to circumstantial evidence in order to answer it. One well-known fact is that most Arabs refer to blacks as “Abed” which means “slave” in Arabic. This seems to say something about the situation of racism in the Arab world.

Anti Israel facsism: Holding Israel to a standarad, NO COUNTRY can. Just after pluralistic multi racial Israel has nominated it’s Arab minister… [end of 2007]. No matter what Israel does — the very democratic Israel that is enabling for Arab-advocacy & Arab propagandists to flourish, such groups that have a job of ‘silencing real tracism, hatred & terrorism by Arabs inside/outside of Israel’, via crying ‘racism’ on ANYTHING, good hearted Israel that faces imminent danger from a sea of fascism, Islamofascism or plain Arab racism, usually both combined — it just can never “satisfy” the charges of “racism”.The Arab racists know that, which is why they know they can go on & on & on about it. “Palestinian” Arabs: If you dare defend yourself, I will call you a “racist”. How can one expect to survive fascist Arabs inside Israel that conspire to slaughter innocent non-Arab Israelis? How can anyone criticize indisputable vital needed security measures in the war on terror?

Why is it that a checkpoint on Jews is quite OK but a checkpoint for Arabs have to be connected to “racism”?

Is this double standard not racist?

Last but not least, Don’t forget the good ol’ Arab occupied UN that jumps on any “racism” charge, old or new, the body that would never voice anything on real racism by the entire Arab world on ALL it’s minorities, without any explanation of ‘fighting terrorists’ insight.

Follow the Money: Obama contributor Talat M. Othman 23 Feb 2008 by to be announced Khalidi, a “virulent critic of Israel”, has “denounced Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state.” Pipes wrote that Othman is “president of the founding committee of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC). …

Anger towards Israel by its Arab neighbors is out of proportion to Israel’s sins. What we are witnessing in the Middle East is anti-Semitism, not politics. It is Jew-hatred, not a dispute over borders or rights or Palestinian statehood. This present conflict is the direct result of Arab racism and Arab intolerance.

As long as middle-eastern Arabs teach their children to hate Jews, there will be no lasting peace.

We who once held a similar disdain for black people should understand better than most what sort of challenges the Middle East faces. Generations have been taught hatred. Generations have been taught that Jews are not human beings. Generations have been taught that every piece of bad fortune has Jewish conspirators at its heart.

That sort of irrational racism can’t be eliminated by UN resolutions. It can only be reversed by sane and tolerant Arabs who are willing to speak out against their brothers.

And they better speak out soon.

This Middle East anti-Semitism has become much worse than anything we ever saw here in America. When Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks unapologetically about genocide, any student of history can see that the racist fires of hatred are blazing hotter than they ever were in the American South. Our Ku Klux Klan was a murderous bunch of hate-mongers armed only with rifles and dynamite. Think what might have happened if they’d had Katyusha rockets and Kalashnikovs. Hezbollah is the Klan on steroids.

And like the Klan, Hezbollah is being driven by a warped religious zealotry. It believes that killing Jews is God’s work.

Are there righteous Muslims in the Arab world who will stand up and say that Allah does not hate Jews? Are there righteous Muslims in the Arab world who will say that groups like Hezbollah are distorting the teachings of Islam for their own purposes?

I doubt that peace in the Middle East is possible. I doubt that an entire generation of Arabs will come to repent of their anti-Semitic hatred. Jews make useful whipping boys for the powerful but incompetent Arab leaders who can’t make the trains run on time, or provide decent lives for their citizens.

Until Hezbollah and Iran and Syria agree that Israel has a right to exist, and that Jews have a right to live in peace, Israel needs the protection of the West against the Hitlerian plans of the powers that surround it. The West, which has learned a few hard lessons about the evils of racism, needs to come to Israel’s defense.